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…is required most extensively in societies changing rapidly from a subsistence to an industrial economy and concurrently changing politically and socially. Mass literacy acquires a new importance in these nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and the establishment of universal primary education becomes a social imperative. To prevent a…

In noncommunist developing countries, the press enjoyed varying degrees of freedom, ranging from the discreet and occasional use of self-censorship on matters embarrassing to the home government to a strict and omnipresent censorship akin to that of communist countries. The press enjoyed the maximum amount of freedom…

…a significant leadership role among developing countries and nonaligned nations (i.e., those not associated with either the Eastern or Western bloc). Cubans, who had been redefining themselves as an “Afro-Latin American people” since the late 1960s, offered technical, commercial, and military assistance to several states in Africa, Latin America, and…

…the library services in the developing countries, particularly in Africa and Asia. Even in India and China, with their long history of using books, a steady and satisfactory progress is hindered by shortages of finance, materials, and trained staff. Some universities in these nations have large libraries and receive grants…

In less-developed parts of the world, mass transportation was shielded from automobile competition by the inability of citizens to afford cars and by government policies that kept both automobile and gasoline prices high.

Created by the United Nations in 1947 to help promote educational, scientific, and cultural development, UNESCO quickly became the primary provider of information about the possibilities of broadcast media in the world’s underdeveloped countries, and it funded many experiments involving the more effective…

In relatively underdeveloped countries, or the underdeveloped parts of recently industrializing countries, security technology generally exists in rudimentary form, such as barred windows, locks, and elementary personnel security measures. In many such regions, however, facilities of large international corporations and sensitive government installations employ sophisticated equipment and…

…been used, primarily in the developing world, to foster literacy programs, population planning campaigns, and agricultural development programs. In Indonesia, for example, wayang shadow puppets have been used, with the content of traditional plays altered to include family planning messages. In some projects, theatre programs are prepared using villagers as…

commerce and industry

…is, shorter and simpler—in the less industrialized nations. There are notable exceptions, however. For instance, the Ghana Cocoa Marketing Board collects cacao beans in Ghana and licenses trading firms to process the commodity. Similar marketing processes are used in other West African nations. Because of the vast number of small-scale…

The less-developed countries have unique problems of employee training, their economic advance depending largely on the introduction of new and unfamiliar techniques. Training organization is needed in basic skills, both industrial and clerical, and for the provision of adequate quantities of trained technicians, supervisors, and competent…

In some Asian and African countries, trade unions allied with independence movements often resorted to general strikes as a means of political protest during colonial rule. In contemporary times, the small scope of industry in those countries has tended to limit trade union activity. Wherever organized trade unions exist in…

…transition hold good for the developing societies known as the Third World? Nearly all of these countries experienced rapid population growth after World War II, at rates greater than had ever occurred anywhere in the West. Western aid and medical science spectacularly reduced the high death rates, often by more…

…paid by consumers in the developing world. Accordingly, developing countries generally have been slow to implement TRIPS. Some economists, however, maintain that the long-term effect of the agreement will be to benefit developing countries by stimulating local innovation and encouraging foreign investment. Despite the existence of TRIPS, global rates of…

…the negotiating position of the less-developed countries. Specifically, the trade negotiations would aim at improving the conditions of access for products of interest to such countries while ensuring stable, equitable, and remunerative prices for primary products. Tropical products would be given special and priority treatment. The principle of nonreciprocity in…

…late 20th century in some less-developed countries was characterized by the expansion of import-competing industries protected by high tariff walls. In many of those countries, tariffs and various quantitative restrictions on manufactured goods were high, but the effective rates of protection were often even higher, because the goods tended to…

Most less-developed countries have agriculture-based economies, and many are tropical, causing them to rely heavily upon the proceeds from export of one or two crops, such as coffee, cacao, or sugar. Markets for such goods are highly competitive (in the sense in which economists use the…

In less-developed countries, wholesalers are often the sole or primary means of trade; they are the main elements in the distribution systems of many countries in Latin America, East Asia, and Africa. In such countries the business activities of wholesalers may expand to include manufacturing and…

economics, finance, and currency

economic development

…also be seen in the less-developed regions of the world. The panorama of these economies represents a panoply of economic systems, with tradition-dominated tribal societies, absolute monarchies, and semifeudal societies side by side with military socialisms and sophisticated but unevenly developed capitalisms. To some extent, this spectrum reflects the legacy…

…emphasize the need for a developing country to invest in a wide range of related and cooperative enterprises, public as well as private. There is no point in building factories and machines, they say, if the educational system does not provide a labour force capable of using them. There is…

…North America) and the poorer developing countries of the South (i.e., Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and parts of Asia). In general, the countries of the South were reluctant to hamper their economic growth with the environmental restrictions urged upon them by the North unless they received increased Northern…

…became quite heavy among certain developing countries, and their external debt expanded at a very rapid, unsustainable rate. The result was an international financial crisis. Countries such as Mexico and Brazil declared that they could not keep up with the schedule of interest and principal payments, causing severe reactions in…

, low wage rates in developing countries and the dependency of these countries on markets in wealthier countries). In the 1950s and ’60s, American economist W.W. Rostow and other experts on Western economic development made popular the argument that after a period of tension, disorder, and even chaos within a…

economic planning

…had given rise in many developing countries to a repugnance to Soviet planning methods, while the methods used in the developed noncommunist countries were felt to be not directly applicable, either. There was consequently no settled planning doctrine in the developing countries, and the approach of governments remained empirical. In…

Since the end of World War II, it has become an accepted practice among the governments of the developing countries to publish their “development plans.” These are medium-term plans, usually for a five-year period. The aim is to select a period long…

Well-developed money markets exist in only a few high-income countries. In other countries money markets are narrow, poorly integrated, and in many cases virtually nonexistent. Despite the many differences among countries, one can say in general that the degree of development of a…

…capita than countries that are less developed. In the early 21st century, for example, the World Bank estimated that the per-capita GNI was approximately $10,000 and above for the most-developed countries but was less than $825 for the least-developed countries. Income also varies greatly within countries. In a high-income country…

Of even wider importance, most nations outside the original industrialized group also began to record substantial increases in labour productivity beginning around 1950 (see Table 4). What fragmentary information is available indicates that generally low rates of productivity growth were the norm in those countries before 1950. So World War…

…of farmers and workers in developing countries by ensuring that they have access to export markets and are paid a fair price for their products. Those objectives are often achieved by establishing direct trading relationships between small-scale producers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and fair trade organizations (FTOs) in…

…countries in Africa remained severely underdeveloped despite receiving relatively large amounts of foreign aid for long periods. Beginning in the late 20th century, humanitarian assistance to African countries was provided in increasing amounts to alleviate suffering from natural disasters, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and destructive civil wars. Major initiatives to combat…

Less-developed countries are often former colonies whose economies were focused on the production of raw materials destined for the manufacturing industries of their colonial masters. Upon achieving independence, few former colonies had modern industrial economies or trained workforces that could compete in the global marketplace,…

In many developing countries, receipts for invisibles are exceeded by payments for them. This deficit is closely tied to the foreign debt and interest payments often made by developing countries to the developed countries. The growing external debt of some developing countries—and their inability to repay the…

…or mixed economies, especially in less-developed economies, where they sometimes coexist with privately owned banks. There they are justified on the grounds that nationalized banks are a necessary element of a developing country’s economic growth. The general performance of such banks, like that of banks in socialist economies, has been…

government

…apparatus of the state in developing countries, however, rarely has come close to achieving the impersonal, rule-based status that Weber depicted. Nor has it generally been able to produce the level of proficiency that Weber claimed was characteristic of bureaucracy. Often the lack of sufficient resources to pay officials in…

Less-developed countries have had to face the opposite problem with their civil services. After World War II many such countries became independent before they had developed effective administrative structures or bodies of trained civil servants. Few of the colonial powers had trained indigenous…

In developing countries and in those with authoritarian regimes, there is a much narrower range of economic groups, very few—if any—public interest and cause groups, and some government interests. In these regimes, informal interests are generally the most important and the most numerous.

The establishment of efficient and comprehensive postal systems in the developing countries is important internationally as well as from the purely domestic viewpoint. Successful maintenance and progressive improvement of international postal service require the effective cooperation of all member countries of the UPU.

Some of the communist parties in power in developing countries did not differ significantly from their counterparts in industrialized countries. This is certainly true of the Vietnamese Communist Party and the Workers’ Party of North Korea. There have always been, however, countries in…

health

disease

…infestations are encountered in the less-developed areas of the world where sanitation is not optimal. Indeed, parasitic infestations constitute major causes of death in regions of Central and South America, Africa, India, and Asia. (For additional information about diseases of biotic origin, see infection.)

In certain underdeveloped countries, especially in Africa, the incidence of this malignancy is high and is a major cause of death in the population. Most of these cases appear to stem from the prevalence of chronic viral hepatitis or the chronic presence of viruses in the blood…

…began to rise again in developed countries. The disease’s resurgence was attributed in part to complacent health care systems, increased immigration of people from regions where tuberculosis was prevalent, and the spread of HIV. In addition, throughout the 1990s the number of cases of tuberculosis increased in Africa. Global programs…

…limited epidemiological data available from less-developed countries, reported rates range from 5 to 25 per thousand in the general population. Such variations are not unexpected given the differences in sampling and screening methods used across studies as well as the dissimilar circumstances of risk in different countries. Nonetheless, important risk…

In least-developed countries (LDC) a primary cause of infant mortality is poor quality of water. Drinking water that has been contaminated by fecal material or other infectious organisms can cause life-threatening diarrhea and vomiting in infants. A lack of clean drinking water leads to dehydration and…

…a major problem in the developing world, especially in Africa and Southeast Asia; in the poorest countries hundreds of thousands of children become blind each year due to a deficiency of the vitamin. Even a mild deficiency can impair immune function, thereby reducing resistance to disease. Night blindness is an…

Health services in China since the Cultural Revolution have been characterized by decentralization and dependence on personnel chosen locally and trained for short periods. Emphasis is given to selfless motivation, self-reliance, and to the involvement of everyone in the community. Campaigns stressing…

Developing countries have sometimes been influenced in their approaches to health care problems by the developed countries that have had a role in their history. For example, the countries in Africa and Asia that were once colonies of Britain have educational programs and…

social issues

…is far more prevalent in developing countries, where millions of children—some as young as seven—still toil in quarries, mines, factories, fields, and service enterprises. They make up more than 10 percent of the labour force in some countries in the Middle East and from 2 to 10 percent in much…

…different kinds of problems facing developing countries seized upon civil society as a kind of panacea. Relatedly, this term became a conceptual mainstay of academic thinking about democratic transitions and a familiar part of the discourse of global institutions, leading nongovernmental organizations, and Western governments. The ideological character and political…

The total resources of many developing nations in Africa, Asia, and South and Central America would be insufficient to support the population adequately even if they were equally divided among all of the citizens. Proposed remedies are twofold: (1) expansion of the gross national product (GNP) through improved agriculture or…

…called, in recent times, the Third World, in Asia and Africa. Since all the colonized and subordinated peoples differed physically from Europeans, the colonizers automatically applied racial categories to them and initiated a long history of discussions about how such populations should be classified. There is a very wide range…

Finally, in many of the developing countries of Asia and Africa the urbanization process has only recently begun, and it is not uncommon to find less than one-third of the population living in urban areas.

…turn were the result of improvements in public health, sanitation, and nutrition that were mostly imported from the developed countries. The external origins and the speed of the declines in mortality meant that there was little chance that they would be accompanied by the onset of a decline in fertility.…

…the problems of the so-called underdeveloped countries. Some modernization theories have been criticized, however, for implying that poor countries could and should develop—or modernize—in the manner of Western societies. Modernization theories have also been criticized for their lack of attention to international power relations, in which the richer countries dominate…

…perceived themselves as saviours of Third World women, little realizing that their perceptions of and solutions to social problems were often at odds with the real lives and concerns of women in these regions. In many parts of Africa, for example, the status of women had begun to erode significantly…

…Structures of Societies (1960) that underdeveloped nations would inevitably develop institutions that paralleled those of the more economically advanced nations, which ultimately would lead to a global convergence of societies. Challenging the theory as a conservative defense of the West, Immanuel Wallerstein’s The Modern World System (1974) proposed a more…

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